If you’ve read my blog before, you know the themes are scattered and the language is more or less loose. I’ve deleted some of my posts because I thought there was a line I should follow where this really is a public page, whereas everything else is just a bunch of crap advertisers are pushing and we’re just there to make numbers for them, with their projections and stuff. I take caution when writing on WordPress, and that means I’ve avoided many themes, though it might seem like I was some kind of crusader of justice and truth, trying to bring out what was the real scenario for mostly younger people and those of us who don’t have a lot of privileges.

That being said, I’ve thought some things through, and I’ve prepared a list of themes that ranges from society and politics to tech and philosophy, with information we’ve received with a certain standard of communication many would say is outdated. What it may trigger? I don’t know. But I feel like, being a Brazilian citizen with many of my constitutional rights stripped away, like appropriate healthcare and financial aid for my mental condition and/or a contract with social security guarantees (something that apparently has vanished, and nobody seems to notice the problem), I want to talk about some stuff.

So, to start off:

There are some geopolitical tensions in the air.

We’ve seen, since an alleged attack of a group everyone calls terrorists, Hamas, on October 7th of last year, an escalation of conflict from Israel, trying to defend itself, and these people, who are ambiguously occupying parts of the Palestinian territory. The land has been disputed for many decades, and there are historical, religious and ideological frictions that gained large visibility but, still, people think it’s too complicated to stand for one side or another — and apparently, social media has decided to favor the Israeli offense, much like, if I remember correctly, the media did with Bush’s war on terror and the many segments of historical events that followed, including several displacements of people, bombardments that are too many to count, and a whole apparatus of intelligence and investments in the military to make things happen as they should, which the general audience could only grasp from official statements, and mainstream journalism had to literally, like CNN sort of boasts it did, “go there”. Needless to say, it’s easier to type in a few words on an internet-powered platform, and this is an entirely different discussion with many consequences and theories on how to set a best practices manual for people to follow. There’s also the fact that Israel, some of us learned for the first time, is not just home of Jerusalem, where people say Jesus was born, but also home to many Jews, who are reportedly under attack in different parts of the world given the rise of ideologies that seem to evoke a little bit of a reminiscence of the Second Great War. This alone seems like a little too much to digest. But there’s more.

Since the occupation of Crimea, a region in Ukraine, in the beginning of 2014, by Russia, things changed a little, and we hadn’t had the feeling of what was really going on until Russian forces decided to strike against Ukraine on multiple fronts, trespassing national borders, by 2021. It’s been a while, but we don’t know how this dispute affects the world and all we seem to understand is that Ukraine wants to join NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), a group of countries that oversees foreign policy in a wide geographical area up the Equator, and that there have been sanctions, or punishments, to Russia in the form of financial limitations and trade cuts. Russia is the biggest country on Earth by geographical extension, but notably not by population. This dispute seems like a sort of divide that should have mobilized more people when the 2014 invasion happened, but it didn’t, finally provoking a global response after everyone had been through the pandemic of COVID-19. European countries that surround the area have citizens who are scared of the next chapters of this conflict, and the West has to map out interests and proceed with aid, a point some people dare to question, despite America’s reputation of arms dealing and military power. It seems complex, especially when an entire generation is scarred by those daily struggles that we don’t often hear about and are not able to live a normal life.

In the midst of the Gaza conflict, the roles of countries like Yemen and Iran have been debated by intelligence officials and defense secretaries, among many. One is a country already devastated, with some rebels trying to control the area, where maritime trade is frequent; the other, a country with resources, but scarcity at the same time, not too popular in terms of its leadership and against whom the United States has fought, but never openly. Still on the maritime routes theme, the change of government and philosophy in Taiwan raises a question on the role of China, and things seem to look a little different in the Southeastern Asia region, much of it reportedly due to economic reasons. In South America, Brazil walks one path, of social justice and sustainable development, while Argentina votes on what many call “radical liberalism”, a term to be debated by specialists — and probably not the likes of Elon Musk. Meanwhile, in Equador, a group of gangsters invades a TV transmission, heavily armed, and makes demands on live broadcast. A shadow of doubt encapsulates the whole region, but somehow, some people want to call it normal.

These are some of the geopolitical tensions that we’ve read about recently. There are other points to consider.

Sociopolitical tensions are getting a lot of scrutiny.

By now, pretty much everyone has an opinion on what the Right and the Left want, what they are, who represents it and they know what’s their preference. You can’t just put it simply as a clash between corporations’ interests and people’s interests, but that actually helps navigate the dispute, as long as you remember that corporations are made of people, and the State has powers a corporation doesn’t.

Much has been debated on the rise of Trumpism: an approach that relies basically on populism in language (which has generated way too much discussion to even quote), a general impression of poor decision-making, and bets on controversy that would justify those decisions, which are taken to media channels and fuel engagement. It matters to say that some people just decide they don’t care about politics, such is the level of toxicity of the engaged userbase or network.

Another point is the need for financial stability. Everyone has a theory and some people have a graph. When it comes to personal finance, all we have is an opinion and a desire for something. We don’t think about what’s best for the country when we buy, overall. But of course, because this is the internet, someone will inevitably point to the contrary.

This leads to another set of issues that we have been monitoring:

Finance has made big headlines, and of course it would.

When people started debating what cryptocurrencies were, they were excited about the future. After scandals involving many of the trades that operated with digital assets, maybe we’ve changed our minds. But it’s not just that: mainstream finance has seen major movements, like the buyout of Credit Suisse by UBS.

We still don’t know what role the International Monetary Fund plays in one or another situation, and besides British politics and the hard case of Brexit, Britain’s disputed decision to leave the European Union trade zone, there’s also new environments being configured, like BRICS and its expansion, allegedly to include countries such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE. To understand this, you’d have to understand the role that each country in the original block played in geopolitics, and that seems a little far-fetched for the ordinary citizen, or maybe for teens and young adults. I myself hadn’t payed an interest in politics since I got into college. It varies, a lot.

In tech, everyone has an opinion. But things move fast.

They made AI a thing. As I’ve pointed out, these are bulks of user input compiled, labelled and presented with a seemingly magical understanding of grammar that is able to answer questions even in long sentences. The AI identifies the subject matter, who would have thought? I bet that teachers who were teaching the difference between the prepositions “to” and “for” would never be able to come up with a thing that puts a president in front of the Davos meeting speaking English with a Spanish accent (which is illegal, by the way). But have you seen the quality of the videos? They’re trying to confuse real with virtual, as the ultimate business strategy. But few have begun to understand that Microsoft now has 3 trillion dollars to spend, which seems like a lot for competitor Meta, annually striking plus 80 billion according to reports of transparency. Facebook is in decline: the new generation, obviously, doesn’t want to be bothered by their parents. Instagram has somehow kept its reputational value while preserving its social media trend potentiality, and so people are still using it — and spending money on it, in order to be seen, from brands to people with brands, and a few exceptions.

Remember when TikTok was a national security threat? Now it’s the speed of information. They haven’t called in the specialists in cognitive science or psychological disorders to weigh in on heavy social media use — or maybe they have, on a second thought; but their studies were ignored (yes they have, just like Frances Haugen, whatever happened to her, like some freaking Jack Ma). We assimilated fast content; we then asked everyone to please stop for a second, and now we’re figuring out what to do next. Storytelling? Threads reposts a content creator claiming that we need to feel connected again — it’s a golden opportunity for script writers, except last time I checked, they were on strike because things sucked for them. And then, for journalists, they suck even more. Post, the initiative that came after Twitter’s buyout and need for alternatives, pays cents; we were looking for hundreds, to be fair. Mastodon is not for journalists at all; it’s for geeks (that word we use when people brag about being able to code or hack, which personally is like an offense to my entire existence). Bluesky? I don’t think anyone knows. But Dorsey’s at it with Bitcoin and all the fintech.

Innovation is on demand, but order, please.

You might think that a financial solution on your phone might be one of the best ideas anyone’s ever had, until you realize that in case you get robbed or your phone cracks, or you reset to factory mode, or you uninstall the app, they’re going to ask for facial recognition (with its highly invasive tools in terms of privacy, which involves biometrics) and your camera needs to be on. Remember the geeks? Turns out you can’t shy away from accusing them of hacking your phone, because it’s not possible that the thing was working one day, and another it wasn’t. But then you realize it could be something like dust. And your whole financial life is suspended.

Not like getting suspended on Twitter, but potentially more dramatic. Twitter, now X, wants to be a center for innovation. And so its owner puts, with his bare hands and fire coming out of his ass, satellites in the sky to bring internet to those who’d never heard of it; manufactures electric vehicles; flies rockets on a mission to colonize other planets one day; announces that video will be the center of… a text-based app. It begs the question on how exactly people make money with clicks. I, for one, lost a computer with a click. Not one, actually: it might have been two. I’m still waiting on the good people of planet Earth to discover my Amazon Wishlist and send me a laptop, plus all the books I put there, and not use the address to intimidate me with fireworks and screams. But something tells me that they were all interested in adult content, not Noam Chomsky’s “Manufacturing Consent” (thanks, Aria).

Education: the take it or leave it situation

When I was in college, I had to realize that my peers were sometimes people who had read classic literature in high school and I just had not. They knew basic concepts from the books by heart, and talked during the most sought-for professors’ lectures, in a class with 50 different people out of 800 every year. Some of them had theories on the plot and the characters, because they had time to read books, and I was busy at work so I could afford pasta and the trip back home. Some of them went to birthday parties and criticized the birthday girl, who was a writer, saying she had to “grow up”, sitting on a table of a handpicked Mexican restaurant that was “not too basic, not too fancy”, and spent the entire night complaining about the food. In a bad comparison, American college students, when they don’t have to go into a dangerous cave with Albus Dumbledore (the reference to the book has been banned, because the author is apparently transphobic for posting reports of permanent damage during wrongful procedures in sex change surgery), they have to tolerate some basic antisemitism. You know, that word that everybody’s talking about. That was reported on the news, coming from deans of prestigious universities, failing to take a stance on what the students felt like were urgent debates. They forgot that they sought out the institution because they wanted a diploma, and suddenly realized that those corny videos that some of them watched when they were younger were actually based on real events: you had a bad grade? Maybe there’s something you could do for me. But I admit that’s far from antisemitic; the metaphor is just that you can’t find a way out of that situation, and it’s against your core beliefs. Student mobilization has gained many formats and started many think tanks and political parties, I believe.

What worries me, sincerely, is the lack of policy decisions that surely would have an impact on everyday citizens, not just Ivy League students; but the Ivy League students don’t seem to care, because where are they on Facebook? Can you imagine being friends with someone who seriously has the name “Harvard” or “Yale” on a Facebook profile? I surely can’t — and now we have this Linktree thing… or even Snapchat, asking what school you’re from. I don’t think there’s enough people devoted to defending the right to privacy, but more than that, education on how to talk on the web and what to expect from interactions. I tend to think we’d be better off if people were free to talk to whoever they wanted, but it’s not clear when there’s a disconnect of interests and conversation just doesn’t flow. It’s also not clear what happens when this is repeatedly the case, and you end up with a compromised account. This, in a country that takes data privacy seriously, is a whole different discussion. In Brazil, just forget it.

The law should be the same for everyone. But not everything is contemplated in the law yet.

Maybe someone living in Texas thinks the fact that I said “hey darling” to his daughter is supposed to be the reason why I should rot in jail for 30 years, or maybe even it’s the case that the person who thinks like that is closer than I think. I don’t use the word “darling” very often. Language changed. Language is changing everyday. And so are people, themselves, and who they talk to, then decide not to, with the press of a thumb. But people don’t seem to realize that a domestic abuser doesn’t get 30 years. A negligent parent doesn’t get any years. And a corrupt president gets to rule the world.

When Americans decided they were going to push the Republican nomination in 2024 until the end, they decided that laws didn’t matter. And we all are suffering with the consequences right now; imagine what could happen in the future. We’d like to stay positive, but apparently, that’s just a word you can use when talking about a spreadsheet that shows earnings in a report. People are down. And you may ask why. Have you considered all the points raised by this blog entry? This isn’t just an attempt to inform people or to boast on my writing skills. This is stuff that worries me, a lot. Now think that there’s more people like me everywhere in the world. Does that make you look positively at things? We have to decide how to act, and in some cases, that requires legal proceedings, which I’m sure, society will discuss, with the aid of traditional media. I’m just an internet guy, everyone.